Fruit Fly
Being a Tomatoholic, theres nothing worse than slicing your best fix (a tomato) of the day and finding it full of grubs, fruit fly grubs.
To avoid the fruit fly from stinging and laying its eggs in you pride and joy cover the fruit with a rag about the same size as a small hanky. Old sheets make good rags. The Fruit Fly attacks the fruit from above not from the the underside of the fruit. Paper bags are also good to use but are at times are difficult to get around a hand of tomatoes. You will need to tie the top of the bag and poke a very small hole in one corner at the bottom of the bag to allow water out.

         
I usually pick the fruit just as they start to turn colour, this way there is less of a risk of fruit fly attack.You can leave them untill they fully ripen on the vine, but you need to keep and eye on them, make sure they are covered up.


These tomatoes have been grown in the middle of summer and are the best tomatoes I have grown this year (2000). Summer is the peak breeding season of the dreaded fruit fly. Being protect from the fruit fly and the heat of the sun, the fruit seem to grow slower, take longer to ripen, and grow larger, it could be because they have less stress to worry about?.